Venezuela economy ‘death spiral’

By David Arnett

Socialism, Communism or maybe just Dictatorial Stupid-ism is killing children, the sick and the weak in Venezuela. Tulsa Todayhas warned repeatedly, but in many newsrooms loony lemmings continue to ignore the humanitarian crisis caused by Bernie Sanders styled socialism. People are hunting rats and pigeons for food in South America.

Venezuela Hospital Patient unattended

While most national media and even the world’s top news aggregator, The Drudge Report, seems to prefer more salacious sexual perversions of Clinton, Weinstein, Franken and Conyers. Basic human compassion demands attention for crisis growing daily in Venezuela.

To their credit, CNN Money recently returned to a hospital they had covered before to find the situation has only gotten much worse.

Dictator dancing as nation riots and police murder

No medicine, no food, lacking basic service personal, many of whom have fled the starving nation. The video report carries a warning. It is graphic as a child dies after rotting away for lack of care. Click here for that report.

CNN Money reports:

The country is spiraling further into a humanitarian disaster spurred by the government’s economic policies, which have caused the currency, the bolivar, to plunge in value and prices to skyrocket.

Venezuelan food shortages: www.ecuadortimes.net

The bolivar has lost 96% of its value this year. As of Tuesday, it took 84,000 bolivars to buy an American dollar. At the beginning of this month, a dollar was worth 41,000 bolivars. And at the start of this year, it only took 3,100 bolivars to buy a dollar, according to DolarToday, a website that tracks the unofficial exchange rate.

The government’s official exchange rate has been deemed meaningless.

A woman blocks the police during a march in Caracas against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (Photo: Manaure Quintero/Zuma Press/Newscom)

Inflation in Venezuela has soared to 4,115% compared with a year ago, according to Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, who is an expert on hyperinflation. The crisis has deepened since the government defaulted on some of its debts.

“The economy is really in a complete death spiral,” says Hanke. “It’s gotten a lot worse there in the last two weeks.”